Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
by Origamidragons
Summary: It made a certain sort of sense that of all his family, Bran remembered first.
1. the crow and the greenseer

It made a certain sort of sense that of all his family, Bran remembered first. After all, he'd always been more... aware, of things long past and things yet to happen, and he'd lived a hundred lives already in the bodies of birds and dogs and wolves.

In any case, it was a bright and sunny morning and he was almost down the stairs when a dog howled somewhere across the neighborhood, and all of a sudden Bran Stark forgot how to walk. He crashed down the remaining steps and lay there for a moment, dazed, as memories that weren't quite his flooded his mind.

 _'Every flight begins with a fall...'_

 _'The things I do for love.'_

The voices swirled around his head, faster and faster, the faces that spoke them appearing in sharp focus for a fraction of a second before blurring back into obscurity.

 _'...we swear it by ice and fire.'_

 _'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?'_

At some point, he began to cry.

 _'That's the only time a man can be brave.'_

 _'I'm not dead either.'_

 _'His name is Summer.'_

...someone was shaking his shoulder, an urgently worried voice in the present overriding the whispers of the past. Bran hadn't realized he'd screwed his eyes shut, but now he opened them.

"Bran!" Jon said, clearly relieved. "Oh, thank god. I heard a thump, and then I saw you and you were just sort of lying there shaking. I thought you might have been having a seizure or something."

Bran stared blankly up at his cousin and adopted brother for a moment.

"Bran? Bran, talk to me, buddy. Your mom will never forgive me if you got hurt on my watch."

"Your watch," Bran repeated, because-

 _'Lord Commander Snow of the Night's Watch-'_

-and then he laughed, a bit hysterically, before wiping the tears from his eyes and shifting himself into a more comfortable sitting position.

"Do you remember?" he asked, so bluntly that it was more of a statement than a question, searching Jon's face for signs of recognition.

"Remember what?" Jon asked, clearly taken aback, and Bran's heart sunk.

"Old Westeros," he said, a bit desperately, words spilling from his lips unbidden. "Your name was Snow, not Stark, and you left to join the Night's Watch, and Arya was your favorite, and you got stabbed to death but the Red Woman brought you back, and you were a bastard and... and you had a direwolf named Ghost!" he finished breathlessly before pausing to take in more air. "And he was white with red eyes and-"

"-and he never made a sound," Jon finished slowly, voice quiet and low. Bran stared at him, hopeful, as something undefinable crossed his face. Jon stared back.

"...Bran?" he asked after a second, sounding disbelieving, and Bran laughed with glee and threw his arms around his cousin's neck.

They were back.

Everything was going to be okay.


	2. no one and the little bird

" _Why do you have to ruin everything!?_ " Sansa shrieked, her voice high and cracking, tears gathering behind her eyes. "Every time I like a boy, you mess it up!"

" _It's not. My. Fault!_ " Arya screamed back, miraculously managing to hit an even more piercing note. "I didn't even know he was sitting there! But I did him a favor! I can't imagine how any boy would be able to stand you anyways!"

As Sansa paused to gather breath for a retort, one doubtlessly involving Arya's jealousy that at least Sansa was pretty, she took note of Bran and Jon out of the corner of her lie, writing in a notebook together in a corner and watching them with concern. Sansa had noticed that they'd been spending much more time together as of late, whispering and snickering under their breath. Just the other day, during a family picnic in the park, Jon had noticed someone walking an oversized white dog and suddenly looked inexplicably sad. Bran had given him a hug without saying a word.

The mystery of Jon and Bran's sudden alliance was one that Sansa fully intended to investigate at a later date, but for the moment she had a screaming match, going on hour two, to win with her obnoxious little sister.

"Yeah, well at least boys like me! No wonder none of them can stand to look at your stupid horsey face!"

And Arya just- stopped, frozen.

Bran and Jon exchanged a glance that Sansa couldn't read and then jumped to their feet. Jon grabbed Arya's arm and bodily dragged her away while Bran yelped ' _sorryAryawehavetotalktoyouforaminute_ ' all in one breath and followed them out. The back door slammed behind them, and Sansa stood staring after them, another insult dying on the tip of her tongue.

"Arya?" someone was saying. "Arya? Can you hear me? We're here, me and Jon. It's us."

Arya- that was one of her names, wasn't it? Arya. Arya and Arry and Nan and Squab and Weasel and Salty and Cat and Beth and Mercy and no one at all.

"Arya, do you remember?"

She did, she did but she didn't want to because she could see Father bowing his head under Ser Ilyn's sword behind her eyes and it hurt and she made a tiny, choked sob and then strong arms were holding her and she cried pitifully into the shoulder that her face was pressed against.

"Welcome back, little sister," Jon said with a grin in his voice, rubbing her back gently, and she sniffled valiantly as the tears slowed and stopped. It had been so long sicnce she'd heard that voice call her that, and she missed it. She had missed it so very much.

She leaned back away from Jon's shoulder, and stared at him for a moment before punching him in the chest. "That's for leaving," she declared, and Jon chuckled a little wetly before pulling her into another hug and crying himself that time for a good few minutes before they separated again.

"What happened?" she asked, her voice uncharacteristically small and weak. She hated it. It was Bran who answered, though, not Jon, and she jerked in surprise when he spoke up from behind her. She'd forgotten he was there at all, gripped as she had been in the throes of returning memories.

"We don't know," her younger brother admitted. "We're just sort of... back. We're pretty sure we're the only ones that remember, Mom and Sansa and Robb definitelt don't but Dad might, its hard to tell with him."

"Dad," Arya murmured, because she'd almost forgotten that he was alive again, and she just barely dodged another bout of tears at the reminder. "...I need to go see Dad. Just to-"

"He's in his office," Jon finished for her.

* * *

Ned Stark had just finished signing off on yet another paper- this one a proposal to expand his company to the nearby town of Barrowton, an idea he agreed with wholeheartedly- when someone banged on the door to his study five times in quick succession.

"Come in," he called, and a moment later his youngest daughter was peering around the edge of the doorframe, eyes red and puffy with tear tracks down her face. Concern immediately blotted out any other thoughts Ned might have had. "Arya? Are you okay?"

She didn't respond right away- just stared at him for a moment, eased the rest of the way through the doorway, and then she was jumping up onto his lap and burying her face in his chest. "You're okay," she mumbled into the fabric. "You're really okay."

"Arya, what's this about?" Ned asked. "Did you have a nightmare?"

Arya hesitated before answering, just long enough to make Ned certain there was something else going on there. Then she said, in a very quiet voice, "Yeah. It was a bad dream, a really really scary one. But it's over now."

She said it again, softer, as though she didn't want Ned to hear it.

"It's over."

* * *

"Arya! Arya, I know you're in there!" Sansa was yelling, hammering on the thick wooden door to Jon's room. Arya was indeed in there, but she had no intention of emerging to face her sister's wrath again. After her revelation, she just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep for a week.

"Go away!" she yelled at the door, trying valiantly and failing miserably to keep the tears out of her voice.

"Arya's not feeling good, Sansa," Jon added from his spot beside the door that he had claimed as his own after setting Arya down to rest in his bed. He'd tried to take her to her own room, but she hated the idea of being alone right then, so Jon's room it was. "Leave her alone."

"And you, too! What's up with you? You never talk to me anymore, you and Bran are always whispering and stuff, and now Arya gets to join your little club too? It's not fair! I want to know what's going on!" Sansa yelled, punctuating the last word with a kick that almost certainly did more harm to her foot than to the door.

"No," Jon said, "you really don't. Please just leave it, Sansa. Be happy. Be a kid."

"No!" Sansa shrieked. "If you won't tell me, then I'll tell Mom!"

Jon and Arya made panicked eye contact from across the room, and they both had the same thought: 'Not her. Don't make her remember.'

Catelyn still wasn't Jon's mother, this time around, but they were on markedly better terms than the last time, since she had known of his parentage from the start. Neither Jon nor Arya knew the exact circumstances of Catelyn's demise in old Westeros, but they knew enough to know that they definitely shouldn't be forcing those awful memories on her again.

Jon yanked the door open, pulled Sansa inside, and closed it behind her.

"Leave Mom alone," he said flatly, "and we'll tell you."

Sansa glared at him sideways, her gaze flicking back and forth between Jon standing before her and Arya sitting on the bed, dried tear trails running down her face. "What's really going on? Why won't you tell me?"

Jon sighed and crouched down in front of her. "You're not going to like it, Sansa. And once I tell you, you can't forget."

Sansa's stance stiffened in determination. "I want to know."

Jon looked uncertain, but produced the plain black notebook he and Bran had been writing in earlier. On the cover, in Bran's neat handwriting, the words 'Old Westeros' were scrawled in black pen. Sansa gave Jon and Arya questioning looks, feeling suddenly unsure, before she slowly opened it.

On the first page was an uneven map sketched in pencil of a misshapen continent, graphite lines splitting it into provinces, and Sansa's heart hammered behind her ribs at the familiarity of it. She ran her fingertips over it lightly, dusting them with shiny grey, before turning the page.

"What is this?" she asked, and her voice was cracking and she didn't know why. "I... I don't..."

"It's our past. Everything Bran and I could remember," Jon answered, and before she could ask what on Earth that was supposed to mean, flipped a few pages forward until he reached one that had 'Sansa Stark' scribbled at the top of it. Before was a drawing of a woman who looked just like her, but older, sadder, wearing a formal blue dress. There was a wolf at her side.

"That's me," she muttered, and then, words coming unbidden, "and that's Lady."

Her eyes widened in shock, and then-

"Oh."

How could she have forgotten?

She finally managed to look up from the page at Jon and Arya, who were watching her with concern. She laughed, the sound choked and watery.

"Hello," she whispered.

She was home.


	3. the lord of winterfell

Ned Stark had never not known who he was. He had no moment of grand realization, no suitably over-dramatic revelation. He just… did, and always had, in the vague sort of way that one knows their native language.

Perhaps that was why he had been such a solemn child- all those years of painful memories, all that loss and sorrow and suffering, all stuffed inside a mind too small and young to hold them. He didn't think so, though, because he'd been like that before as well. Quiet sternness was just a part of his personality.

He had to watch as it all happened again, unable to stop it, unable to do anything but watch. Brandon died young again, car crash on King Road driving drunk, and Lyanna died younger, giving birth to a baby she should never have had.

Everything happened again, and the wheel spun on and on.

He raised Jon as his own again, he married Cat again, he fathered all his children all over again and spent his days hoping that this time, they could be happy. That this time, they could be innocent like they had never had the chance to be before. That they could be children.

Of course, the gods were rarely so kind.

He was not a fool. He never had been, in either life. He had been an honorable man, and some would say that was the same thing, but he disagreed. He was no fool, and he knew his children better than he knew himself, better than he ever had before. The degree of awkward formality that the feudal system had imposed on his relationships with them was gone, and he could just be a father.

For all that, it took him quite a long time to notice that four of his children had started acting differently. Bran stumbled over nothing sometimes, like he had forgotten how to work his legs momentarily, while Arya moved her awkward eleven-year-old body with nimble grace that he knew she hadn't possessed before. Sansa and Arya had stopped fighting almost entirely, and Sansa and Jon carried a new sort of solemn weight beyond their years with them. The other day, Catelyn had dropped a pan to the floor and at the sudden loud noise, Jon had immediately reached across his waist for a sword that wasn't there. Even when his younger daughter was curled in his lap, sobbing over a 'nightmare,' he hadn't realized. He hadn't wanted to.

And, of course, all four of them, almost in unison, always glanced up whenever a dog howled nearby.

He didn't really put all the pieces together until the Renaissance Festival, and he supposed it was partially his fault for not wanting to see it, for not wanting them to remember, not wanting to believe they already had. He should have known it was a bad idea to bring them at all.

To his credit, he hadn't realized just how bad an idea.

"Love, they have a reenactment in the center of the grounds today! Oh, we should go see," Catelyn had said, and he so loved seeing her with none of the mournful bitterness that had marked her face the last few times he'd seen her in the past that he conceded.

It wasn't until they were all crowded together, bodies pressing in on all sides, and an actor was kneeling on the wooden stage that he realized.

Jon was grabbing his arm. "We have to leave. We need to-"

The fake sword came down, the prop head bounced into the crowd, all of the blood drained from Sansa's face, and Arya collapsed into screaming hysterics. Jon effortlessly scooped her thrashing body up onto his shoulders and started to shoulder out through the crowd, ignoring the grumbles, insults and 'watch it, buddy's from the people he pushed out of the way. Sansa and Bran followed wordlessly through the trail he left behind him, holding each other's hands so tightly it must have hurt.

Ned started to follow after them, but stopped, guilt bubbling up in his throat as the realization finally slid home.

He had so wanted them not to remember. He had so wanted them to get to be children again. To be innocent and to not have to see the world through eyes that had seen such horrors.

Catelyn laid a hand on his shoulder, her other arm crooked to support Rickon on her shoulder. "What happened? Is Arya alright?"

His four children who were so much older than their years had broken free of the crowd and were sitting together at a picnic table, Arya still breathing in harsh, screaming sobs he could hear even over the noise of the fair. Ned had to tear his gaze away from them to meet Cat's concerned eyes.

"She's fine," he said, knowing she wasn't, knowing that there was no way he could ever explain why. "The reenactment just scared her, I think."

As he spoke, he absently brought his hand up to rub at his neck, where the searing line of pain that had violently appeared when the sword came down was still fading. Catelyn noticed the movement, and raised a delicate eyebrow.

"Checking to see if your head's still attached?" she asked in a gently teasing tone. He could only manage a shaky smile in response, but if she noticed that, she said nothing.

He wanted to talk to them. He wanted to rub Arya's back until her breathing returned to normal, and hold Sansa tightly until the color returned to her face, still waxy white with shock. As he thought it, Bran looked up, and made eye contact with him across the heads of the crowds. Bran tilted his head just slightly.

It's okay.

Ned smiled, a real smile, and pressed a kiss to Catelyn's temple. "I'm going to go make sure the girls are alright," he said, knocking they weren't, but that maybe someday they could be.

With that he set off, weaving through the crowd to where his children waited.

There were so many things he needed to say.


End file.
